


Namesake

by virgo_writer



Series: Sixteen-by-Eight Feet [14]
Category: Make It or Break It
Genre: Baby Names, F/M, Future Fic, Gen, Humor, Romance, Sasha junior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-02
Updated: 2011-01-02
Packaged: 2020-09-03 12:37:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20265997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virgo_writer/pseuds/virgo_writer
Summary: “It’s a perfectly good name," Sasha protested charmingly. 16x8 Universe. Payson/Sasha





	Namesake

_December 2018_ **   
**

  
“No,” Payson shot down quickly, not even taking a moment to consider his suggestion.

“Why not?” Sasha protested charmingly. “It’s a perfectly good name.”

“In Romania,” Payson answered tightly. “Not in America, which is where we live and where our son will have to go to school.” Her argument was implied – she would not inflict on their child any name that was bound to get him beaten up.

“It won’t be that bad,” Sasha insisted, unconvinced by the supposed danger. “He’ll fit right in with all the Hermiones and Artemises, and whatever those kids from the Twilight books are called.”

Payson rolled her eyes, Sasha’s argument doing nothing to persuade her. It only made her hold her conviction stronger, given the group of oddly named children that their son would be lumped with by virtue of their mutual decision to give their children traditional Romanian names. She disliked the assumptions that people would make from the name – they were _considering_ naming their son after his great-grandfather, not some fictional horror character. 

With a disgruntled cry, she threw her hands up in frustration, wobbling to her feet. She drew her hands to her hips in a gesture that probably would have been intimidating, but for her swollen pregnant belly intruding on the picture. Sasha couldn’t help but smile at her adoringly as she tried to chastise him for his poor choice in names.

“Sasha, we are not calling our son ‘Dracula’,” she told him sternly, narrowing her eyes against his gentle gaze. She suspected he was trying to convince her with his ‘come to bed’ eyes, but refused to fall for those again given that they resulted in her current predicament. 

Sasha shook his head. “Bloody Americans always mispronouncing things,” he admonished jokingly.

“It’s ‘_Dracul_’,” he insisted, stressing the first syllable instead of the second. He softened the ‘c’ so it sounded more like the ‘g’ sound it was intended to have – the sound was closer to ‘dragon’ by his pronunciation – and the ‘u’ having more of an ‘oo’ sound. His Romanian tongue gave it a completely different resonance that almost made it acceptable, but then again, it may have just been her increased libido reacting as it did any time he showed off his impressive knowledge of the Romance languages. 

Of course, she did maintain her wits about her despite his cheating use of his native tongue, forging on in her argument. “Firstly, Bram Stoker was Irish, not American, which makes him more your people than mine,” she argued defensively. Sasha raised a sceptical eyebrow, but decided not to mention that ‘Keeler’ was an Irish surname and that her grandfather had spent most of last Thanksgiving telling him about their family back in the ‘Emerald Isle’. His people indeed! His mother’s family were from Cardiff, which was a different (and much colder) part of Britain altogether.

“Secondly,” she continued, oblivious to Sasha’s chain of thought, “it doesn’t matter how it’s supposed to be pronounced because everyone will just call him Dracula and not Dracul.” She made a very poor attempt at imitating the way the name had sounded from Sasha’s lips, but failed to make it sound even half as appealing. “We’d spend all our time correcting people and everyone would think we were vampire obsessed nutters rather than people with a genuinely good reason for calling our son Dracul.” She breathed deeply once she was done after expelling the whole sentence in one breath. Arguing with Sasha could be very tiring.

He nodded, accepting her second argument as reasonable and calmly crossed ‘Dracul’ off the list of crossed-out names they were slowly developing.

“What about your father’s name?” she suggested hopefully.

“Dumitru?” Sasha grimaced, looking uncomfortable with the suggestion. While he was certainly on better terms with his father post-Olympics 2012 than he was post-Olympics 2000, they certainly weren’t – and never would be – in a place in their relationship for him to actually consider naming his son Dumitru Belov the Second. The name didn’t even make it onto the list in order to be crossed off it.

“Aurel?” Sasha suggested, the rolled ‘r’ making her shudder pleasantly. “Actually no,” he said, changing his mind when he considered the meaning. They were both four-time Olympic gold medallists and most people would think them a tad egotistical giving their son a name that meant golden. 

“Catalin?” he tired.

“Girls name,” Payson responded. “And you can forget about Carol and Cristi too,” she added, glancing down at his list of names.

“Dragomir?” he suggested, crossing it out when he saw another grimace cross Payson’s face. He suspected it had something to do with the fact that it sounded like some obscure member of the fellowship.

“Why don’t we just call him ‘Alexandru’?” Sasha suggested with a slight air of frustration. This had been his suggestion from the start – partially to avoid patronymic naming conventions , but mostly because he liked the idea of having a little Sasha Junior running around with just the right amount of Payson mixed in for good measure. He really was just a big softie at heart.

“You do _like_ ‘Alexandru’, don’t you, _Dragă _?” he wheedled playfully, dragging on a strand of her blonde her in a manner that she could quite rightly deem seductive.

She gave him a painful smile. Of course she liked the name ‘Alexandru’ – she _loved_ the name ‘Alexandru’ – but every time Sasha mentioned naming their son Alexandru, she could hear her own scornful words repeating back to her in her mind. She’d already confirmed part one of the prophecy and she’d be damned if she completed the second. The words ‘Sasha Junior’ taunted painfully in her ears.

Oh, but Sasha looked so hopeful every time he mentioned it. He always said it playfully – just as he did now – as though it was just a joke that expecting fathers were meant to make about their expected sons, but she could tell that there was at least a part of him that seriously wanted to name their son Alexandru and that there was nothing that would please him more than sharing his name with their first born.

“As a middle name,” she conceded, feeling guilty at her own reluctance to give him more than that. “We’ll have it as a middle name. Not as his first name.”

Sasha frowned. Having Alexandru as a middle name was as good as a patronymic, in fact, he might as well just conform to the traditional naming convention and stick with the patronymic he was trying to avoid.

“How about ‘Nicolae’?” she suggested in return, having spoken with her husband about his former coach enough that her accent was near perfect when pronouncing it. She was slowly assimilating the language – not quite enough to speak it fluently, but more than enough to understand the gist of what people were saying when they spoke Romanian around her. Not that anyone other than Sasha really spoke Romanian around her, and he largely did so when was trying to seduce her, and therefore his meaning was usually obvious, but she knew enough to know that he wasn’t simply reciting the Romanian phone book to her when he decided to show his romantic side.

“It could be a homage to the perfect team,” she added with a smile. “Nicolae and Alexandru, _din nou impruna_.”

“Impreuna,” he corrected, returning her smile. She was getting better, and he was sure she’d be fluent by the time their son learnt to talk. And he loved the way she said his name, even though it wasn’t quite right – she couldn’t quite get her tongue around the rolling ‘r’ sounds, but he’d much rather hear her butchering it (or so she said) than hear anyone else get it right. 

He gave her quick kiss as reward, an incentive to get her speaking Romanian more often. “But why can’t it be ‘Alexandru Nicolae’?” he asked her as he pulled away, still curious as to why his name was relegated to second place.

“Just cos,” she replied, pointedly avoiding his eye. Sasha raised an eyebrow at her imploringly, but she refused to give him the reason. It was too embarrassing and simply too childish to reveal to her husband. She was twenty-five, after all, and far too old to be letting some stupid comment she made when she was a love-struck teenager control her.

“How about we make a deal?” Payson suggested, willing to compromise to some degree. “If he’s born on or before Christmas, we do it my way – Nicolae Alexandru – and if he’s born after Christmas, we do it your way. Okay?”

Sasha agreed, thinking the odds were in his favour. The baby was due just a few days before Christmas and they both had their predictions for when he would arrive. Payson, basing her prediction upon what she would vaguely refer to as woman’s intuition, was expecting the baby to arrive right on schedule mostly because her body had always been good at keeping to schedules. Sasha, who had gone and read more than a dozen parenting books upon discovering that he was about to be a father, expected the baby in the last week of December and towards the first week of January. Both were confident in winning the wager and so Sasha let it go without further questioning.

And Payson remained confident right up to the eleventh hour, or rather, the fifteenth. Her water broke Christmas morning, just as she was unwrapping her gifts and cosying up with Sasha to watch ‘A Muppets Christmas Carol’. Their plans for the day – which largely consisted of watching Christmas specials seeing as pending childbirth had gotten them out of having to spend time with Payson’s extended family – were ruined, along with their couch when ‘baby Belov’ (as the nurses insisted upon calling him) suddenly decided it was time for him to make his entrance.

“Sasha, for gods sake!” she cried cringing through a contraction. She had been told that these would only get worse as the labour progressed and hoped that people had simply been exaggerating. “I do not need an electric toothbrush charger in order to have a baby! Everything I need is in that bag, now can we please just go?”

“Right, right,” he said quickly, panic evident in his wide blue eyes. “Right,” he repeated once again, racing towards the door. He stopped and turned back, desperately searching the surfaces around him. “Pay, have you seen my keys?”

“Sasha,” she growled dangerously.

“Right, I’ll just take yours then,” he replied and picked up the fluffy key chain hanging nearby. “C’mon, _iubită_,” he said, wrapping an arm protectively around her as he led her out towards the car. “Just breathe, _iubită_. _Respira_.”

“Sasha, now is not the time for language lessons,” she warned him, gritting her teeth.

“Right, sorry,” he said quickly looking contrite. She almost wanted to laugh at his expression – the unshakeable Sasha Belov stood beside her, looking like a lost little boy with no clue what to do next. It softened her slightly, and she took pity upon him for the time being and bit back the scathing reply that threatened to escape. She made a subtle gesture towards the car to remind him of what he was to do next, letting his instincts take over from there.

“I forgot to call your mother,” he said suddenly, half-way to the hospital. He had been in a sort of trance for the duration of the ride, but suddenly came to with this one thought. “I’ve got to go back and call her.”

“No,” Payson said quickly before her husband could go and do an illegal u-turn back towards their house so he could call her mother. “You can call her at the hospital,” she assured him. “What comes next?” she said, hoping that going over their birthing plan might calm him and bring him back to his senses.

“Pack the car,” he said. “Then put you in the car. Then drive to Saint Augustines and we go straight to the maternity ward, not to the emergency.” Payson nodded along silently and saw Sasha slowly returning to himself, the lost expression fading to one she was more familiar with.

“This is really happening, isn’t it?” he asked with a gaping smile. “We’re really about to have a baby.”

“We are,” Payson smiled back at him.

“I love you,” he told her sincerely, his expression full of warmth and affection. “I love you so much.”

“_Eu te iubesc_,” she replied.

Fifteen hours of labour later, it was much more difficult to maintain that sentiment. Not only because it was the greatest pain she’d ever experienced in her life, but also because it was now Boxing Day and she’d now have to face their arrangement. 

“Oh he’s so cute,” Kaylie cooed as she stroked a hand against the sleeping baby-Belov’s cheek as he lay in his mother’s arms. “I so want one of these. I just want to eat him up.”

“Don’t you dare,” Payson warned teasingly. “Not after all the effort I just went to.” They laughed at the joke, her three best friends already besotted with her tiny baby boy.

“So what did you name him?” asked Lauren, leaning over the end of the bed with an eager look in her eye.

Payson tried to hide her grimace as the moment she had been dreading came upon her. It wasn’t that she disliked the name and she even thought it suited their baby son more perfectly than the alternative, it’s just that she knew her own words were about to be used against her and she could already feel her cheeks flushing with embarrassment. 

“Alexandru Nicolae Belov,” she replied, trying to keep her voice even.

“Alex Andrew?” Lauren didn’t even attempt to hide the grimace on her face or the disdain in her voice. Emily nudged her unsubtly, giving her an admonishing look.

“Great name, Payson,” Lauren lied with a tight, false smile and childishly crossed her fingers behind her back.

Payson rolled her eyes. “It’s not ‘Alex Andrew’,” she replied in a brash accent. “He’s _Alexandru_,” she said, putting especial emphasis on the proper pronunciation. “It’s Romanian for Alexander.”

“Oh,” Lauren said understandingly and began to smile menacingly as realization sunk in. “So you named him after Sasha?” she asked with a grin, leaning eagerly over the end of the bed once again.

“Yes,” Payson said, returning Lauren’s menacing look with a hard glare.

“So _technically_,” Lauren began, drawing out the word, “he’s ‘Sasha Junior’, no?” She gave them what would otherwise have been an innocent smile if not for the sly, almost cruel look in her eyes.

“Technically,” Sasha beamed, his own happiness making him blind to Lauren’s ulterior motives, “although I think he looks more of an ‘Alex’ or ‘Dru’.”

Payson smiled, looking gratefully towards her husband who had unintentionally saved her from Lauren’s taunts.

“I love you,” she told him sincerely, meeting his warm gaze with a matching expression.

“_Eu te iubesc_,” Sasha replied, pride glimmering in his eyes as gazed upon the life they had created. He leaned in closer, his breath warm on her cheek as he whispered in her ear.

“I love you, Payson Marie Belov,” he told her softly, “and I promise we will never call our son ‘Sasha Junior’.”

**Author's Note:**

> Translations:  
din nou impreuna: together again  
Respira: Breath  
Eu te iusbesc: I love you too  
Draga: sweetheart  
Iubita: love
> 
> Original Author Notes:  
Keeler is not an Irish surname. Quick google search suggests it's probably German in origin.  
I may have upgraded the status of patronymics in Romanian naming conventions but I figured that if ABC are allowed to pretend that being Romanian is the same as being Russian then so can I. I just really like patronymics and felt the need to mention them.


End file.
